KNYGA I. Hussain North American Regionalism and Global Spread

With Canada, Mexico, and the United States independently searching trade-agreements outside North America, this volume examines the puzzle if the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement was a means to other ends or an end in itself. A study of 20-years of NAFTA performances on trade, investment, intellectual property rights, dispute-settlement, as well as environmental and labor side-agreements confirms the means component of the equation. Couching this empirical dissonance within the integration-interdependence theoretical debate, permits us to propose the next research agenda: whether other regional economic arrangements also face the same NAFTA fate.